GOVERNMENT

Government

Since Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a proposal for the Brooklyn-Queens Connector (BQX) during his February State of the City address, his administration has marketed the streetcar as a trendy and innovative method of transportation. But to keep the proposed project from becoming just a waterfront tourist attraction, the rationale for the plan has been firmly grounded in its potential to connect working New Yorkers to jobs, both old and new, and cut commute times.

The plan quickly earned the approval of 51 percent of New Yorkers, including 63 percent of low-income New Yorkers, according to a recent city poll by NY1 and Baruch College. Of those polled, 33 percent disapproved of the streetcar plan, while 16 percent didn’t express an opinion.

Keeping New Yorkers, especially those living near the planned route, between Sunset Park and Astoria, involved in the planning process until construction begins in 2019 (or 2020, the administration has not set a firm date yet) will be the next challenge for city officials. Supporters of the project hope to see extensive community outreach that allows residents to play an active role in initial planning stages. The specifics of the plan and its implementation, including the exact route, its effects on traffic and neighborhoods, and construction disruptions, must all be shaped by community input, key stakeholders say.

As with any major infrastructure project, there are sure to be dissenting opinions, and the project already has its share of critics, but key to its success will be the community planning process.

City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez, chair of the Council’s Committee on Transportation, says residents are a key resource for planning transportation projects and must be treated as such. Rodriguez’s upper Manhattan district is far removed from the planned streetcar route, but he will have some oversight through his committee.

“Residents have on the ground knowledge about everything from walkability to how to get from point A to point B the fastest within the neighborhood,” Rodriguez wrote in an email. “This valuable information can help city planners and the EDC best determine how to overcome challenges and garner increased support and excitement from the community. It creates opportunity for dialogue and a back and forth that is valuable in the long run.”

The de Blasio administration recently ran into some trouble when attempting to win community board support for its citywide rezoning proposals meant to spur affordable housing development. While most community boards disapproved of the plans as they reviewed them, the City Council made adjustments and passed them last week.

Rodriguez thinks the Department of City Planning, Economic Development Corporation (EDC), and Department of Transportation (DOT) - the three city agencies key to the BQX plan - have all improved community outreach efforts in recent years, and should continue to engage residents’ while planning the streetcar.

“Questions should focus on where transportation has been lacking, what connections to existing transit can be most advantageous to riders and what areas are most in need of service,” he said.

Council Member Carlos Menchaca, who represents Sunset Park and Red Hook, pushed for community engagement when he spoke at Mayor de Blasio’s BQX press conference in Red Hook. After unveiling the plan during his State of the City, de Blasio held a more detailed event later in February with Menchaca and other key stakeholders who are supportive of the plan.

Red Hook Houses, a NYCHA development that has been isolated by lack of sufficient access to public transportation, has been a focus of the streetcar proposal. The BQX could provide transportation to those living in 13 NYCHA developments, home to more than 40,000 people — about 10 percent of the city’s public housing population. Menchaca emphasized the importance of input from all residents, especially the diverse community of public housing residents.

“Experience has taught me community engagement will fail without involving immigrants, youth, and non-English speakers,” he wrote in an email. “Inclusive community engagement is hard work. But it leads to better results and it’s worth the effort.”

To include these groups, Menchaca called for community planning event times that accommodate working people and parents, multilingual outreach efforts, translators at all meetings, and structured public forums that encourage more participation than simple polling methods.

“I’d also like the Mayor’s planning process to address community concerns about the project’s potential to accelerate harmful gentrification and displacement,” he added. The streetcar is expected to raise property values along its route, which is how the administration plans to pay for its projected $2.5 billion cost (using bonds repaid “value capture”). It is also expected that the streetcar will lead to more restaurants, coffee shops, and other amenities along its route, potentially increasing neighborhood costs.

The de Blasio administration plans to start community outreach measures this year before beginning the formal approval process in 2017, followed by the final design stages in 2018. While the mayor is pushing for construction to begin in late 2019, his top officials in charge of the project have been hesitant and cite 2020 as a more realistic start date.

Until then, community involvement in the initial planning could be the most important part of the project, as the effectiveness of outreach measures may dictate both how well the BQX actually meets residents’ transportation needs and how much buy-in the project earns. Meetings with community boards and civic groups will begin in April, followed by larger community meetings starting in May and June and continuing through the summer. By the fall, city officials aim to report specific findings to project stakeholders.

EDC representatives have already begun to brief elected officials, transit experts, and community advocates, including on expectations for upcoming outreach efforts. Elected officials will be integral in connecting the administration with a wide range of communities and building crowd participation, according to these officials.

After the ongoing initial briefings, EDC plans to organize workshops and open houses in large venues that will allow residents to directly engage with BQX planners. Outside of the public forum setting, EDC will engage residents on the street with interactive planning tools, like through tablets. Residents unable to attend meetings or workshops will be able to participate via web portal.

Resident input on local neighborhood geography along the planned route and nearby it is an important resource for EDC, particularly when navigating plans regarding truck loading, curb regulations, crosswalks, and locations for stops and stations.

The de Blasio administration can also use community outreach as a platform to address concerns about the BQX plan. After the streetcar proposal was announced, critics were outspoken about potential pitfalls, questioning whether improvements to Select Bus Service, Bus Rapid Transit, or subway lines would be more efficient or effective. City officials have maintained that while these were all options for improving connectivity among waterfront neighborhoods and beyond, none of them would stimulate the new development and increase in property value that is expected from the BQX. They also stress that this project won’t preclude others and that streetcars are being utilized around the world as a happy medium between more expensive subways and less interesting buses.

“Bus Rapid Transit tends to go in places that are already developed and that’s why it’s so crowded,” Deputy Mayor Glen said last month on NY1. “Here we’re going to be able to help both existing residents and businesses get connected to each other while also stimulating new development along the corridor in places that can and should accommodate additional development.”

Glen, de Blasio, and others have also said that the BQX is something the city can do on its own, without MTA approval (the MTA is a state authority, controlled by the Governor and his appointed chair.)

Other concerns include subway connections, financing the project, and fare integration. Ben Fried, editor-in-chief of Streetsblog, noted that the proposed route does not include stops near J/M/Z trains and is two to three “long” blocks away from any L train stops. He also questioned the financial plan for BQX’s estimated cost of $2.5 billion.

“The properties the streetcar will serve are already getting developed. (Have you been to the waterfront lately?) The real estate doesn’t need an extra push from a streetcar with poor connections to the subway,” Fried wrote in a Streetsblog post. “If the project is funded by skimming property tax revenue that would have been collected anyway, that’s a plain old subsidy that comes at the cost of other public priorities in the city budget.”

Amid the criticism, the de Blasio administration promoted the BQX with at least five different media releases and the press conference in Red Hook, not to mention multiple appearances by Glen and others on TV and in front of live audiences. The press releases included praise and support from elected officials, CEOs, and others. There are statements from government leaders in other American cities with successful streetcars, like Portland, OR, where a streetcar route provides transportation to almost one-third of the city’s jobs and has stimulated $4.5 billion of new property development.

The proposed route of New York City’s streetcar, estimated to be up and running by 2024, will stretch 16 miles between Astoria and Sunset Park, serving more than 400,000 people in the neighborhoods along the East River, according to city estimates. The mayor’s office projects that commute times between underserved residential areas and employment centers, like Downtown Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, will be shortened significantly, some even cut in half. During his press conference on the subject, Mayor de Blasio estimated that the 20-minute streetcar ride from Red Hook to DUMBO will save commuters an average of five hours per week.

The fare will be pegged to that of a Metrocard ride (currently $2.75), but integration with the MTA fare system is a major question mark that city officials say they are beginning to explore. The BQX will be city-run mass transit, as opposed to the subways and buses run by the state authority. Along with a new ferry system and Citi Bike expansion, de Blasio is making it clear that he is trying to supplement MTA offerings with city-run projects.

To de Blasio, the BQX is not only a project to propel low-income and working-class residents forward as their waterfront neighborhoods continue to develop, but an investment in the future of the city. At the press conference in Red Hook, the mayor noted that the city is stretching its economic centers to include more than Wall Street and Manhattan’s traditional industries. He envisioned the streetcar as key to a burgeoning “five-borough economy” that uses all of New York’s industries, resources, and neighborhoods to their full potential.

“We’re going to make this change to meet the 21st century reality and make this city work better for everyone,” he said. “The next great step towards creating that five-borough economy, towards creating opportunity and addressing income inequality, towards making this extraordinary engine that is the Brooklyn-Queens waterfront all it could be — that next great step is the Brooklyn-Queens Connector.”

But advocates and analysts maintain that the BQX will not be fully advantageous to residents and industries along the waterfront unless community members play an active role throughout the planning process.

“The BQX could be wonderful. I’ve seen street-level rail work well in other settings,” said Council Member Menchaca. “But, at the moment — great renderings notwithstanding — we have what should be the beginning of a conversation with residents, not a finalized plan to which people should merely react.”

A state budget is due by midnight Thursday! How close to the deadline will it go? Will it be late? Odds are Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders will reach a deal on the $150-plus billion spending plan in time, as the governor has made this a priority of his time in office, more or less achieving it in each of his five years leading the state thus far (last year's is the only one in question, as the budget was technically voted through after the midnight deadline). In order to get everything done by Thursday night, the governor may need to issue "messages of necessity" removing the three-day aging period on the budget bills. We'll see what Monday holds as Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan continue to negotiate. One key sticking point remains the details of raising the minimum wage so that it eventually reaches $15 per hour, a major priority for Cuomo and Heastie. There's a chance that the minimum wage will be dealt with, along with several other major policy issues like government ethics reform, in the legislative session following the budget. The state's fiscal year begins April 1. The legislative session continues into June.

It was a quiet Easter weekend all over the state, including in New York City. Mayor de Blasio was in Florida for the holiday - he's back Sunday evening - and several City Council members, including Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito are on a trip to Ireland (along with the speaker, traveling Council members include: Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, Jimmy Van Bramer, Daniel Dromm, and Corey Johnson) - they are due back Tuesday.

Voting in this year's cycle of participatory budgeting began this weekend and continues throughout the week in the 28 (of 51) Council districts where members have decided to run the program, which allows constituents to propose projects and decide how $1-2 million in capital funds gets spent in each.

This week we're largely focused on the state budget, which of course has a great deal at stake for New York City, while city preliminary budget hearings continue at the City Council - it's been a fairly quiet city budget season thus far, though there are one or two points of contention between the Council and the de Blasio administration - like library funding. Still, most in the city are more concerned with the state budget than with city budget negotiations. While Gov. Cuomo has bowed to pressure over his proposed cost shifts to the city for hundreds of millions of dollars in CUNY funding, there are still several other high profile issues de Blasio, other city officials, and many around the city are keeping an eye on.

As always, there's a great deal happening all over the city, with many events to be aware of - read our day-by-day rundown below.

***Do you have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics?E-mail Gotham Gazette editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.***

The run of the week in detail:

MondayBoth houses of the New York State Legislature are in session on Monday in Albany.

10 a.m., the Committee on Public Housing will hold its preliminary budget hearing

2 p.m., the Committee on Immigration will hold its preliminary budget hearing

At 10 a.m. Monday, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer will host a Women’s History Month discussion and networking breakfast, featuring women working for Manhattan city, state, and federal elected officials as well as popular YouTube content creators. The venue will be the YouTube Space in Chelsea Market.

At 10:30 a.m. Monday, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and the Bronx Veteran Advisory Council will host a meeting to educate the local community boards and elected officials on veterans’ resources in the Bronx and across the city. Speakers at the event include Commissioner Loree Sutton of the Mayor’s Office of Veteran Affairs, Jamal Othman, Deputy Director of the NYS Division of Veteran Affairs; and Shawn Kingston from the Bronx VA Medical Center.

At 11 a.m. Monday in the Bronx, "The Tata group...will be donating 10,000 new books to children in New York's 79th assembly district in The Bronx, in partnership with First Book, a nonprofit social enterprise and Assembly member Michael A. Blake. To celebrate this historic effort, one of the Tata group companies, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), will host a "Read-A-Loud" with pre-kindergarten through fifth grade students at Urban Scholars Community School, where each of these 300+ students will receive two books to add to their personal libraries at home."

On Monday at noon in Albany, “A coalition of government reform organizations will come together to respond to Governor Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie's public statements that there will be no ethics reforms included in the final budget agreement. The groups will denounce the “unprecedented” secrecy around budget negotiations while urging that any lump sum budget appropriations be itemized and publicly disclosed.” Participants include Citizens Union; Common Cause NY; League of Women Voters of NYS; NY Public Interest Research Group; and Reinvent Albany.

"On Monday, Mayor de Blasio will join NYPD officials for a counterterrorism tabletop exercise...After the tabletop, the Mayor and NYPD Commissioner Bratton will hold a media availability on terrorism preparedness." This press conference is scheduled for 3 p.m.

At 4 p.m. at City Hall, "the Mayor will hold public hearings for and sign eight pieces of legislation – Intro. 701-A, in relation to low energy intensity building requirements for certain capital projects; Intro. 721-A, in relation to green building standards for certain capital projects and to repeal section 3 of local law number 86 for the year 2005, relating to certain reporting requirements; Intros. 805-A, 814-A and 819, in relation to increasing inclusivity and enhancing the interpretation of the New York City Human Rights Law; Intro. 818-A, in relation to the provision of attorney's fees under the New York City Human Rights Law; Intro. 832-A, in relation to prohibiting discrimination in housing accommodations on the basis of an individual's status as a victim of domestic violence; and Intro. 763-A, in relation to requiring the department of correction to report on security indicators in City jails and repeal section 9-130 of such code, in relation to jail data reporting on adolescents."

TuesdayBoth houses of the New York State Legislature are in session on Tuesday in Albany.

At 8 a.m., City & State and The Plumbing Foundation will host a panel, “Skilled Labor (re)Building NYC,” a discussion to highlight the need for investment in the city’s aging gas infrastructure and the need to make the city more sustainable and resilient. Speakers to include City Council Members Jumaane Williams and Mark Treyger; David Gmach, Con Edison’s Director of NYC Public Affairs; among others.

At 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, The Association for a Better New York will host a breakfast with Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., who will discuss the progress his borough has seen since he first took office in 2009 and offer policy suggestions for the improvement of his borough and the city.

11 a.m., the Committee on Land Use will hold its preliminary budget hearing

1 p.m., the Committee on Technology will hold its preliminary budget hearing

On Tuesday afternoon, Mayor de Blasio is scheduled to deliver keynote remarks at the launch of The Ford Foundation’s “Inclusive Growth in Cities campaign.” The event “will bring together mayors from more than 20 cities around the world—plus other business, philanthropic, and urban leaders—to highlight innovative ideas and smart strategies for addressing rising inequality and fostering inclusive growth worldwide.”

WednesdayBoth houses of the New York State Legislature are in session on Wednesday in Albany.

At 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, The Manhattan Institute will host a conference on career and technical education schools in New York City and across the country. Arne Duncan, former U.S. Secretary of Education, will deliver the keynote address.

10 a.m., the Committee on Women’s Issues will introduce a bill requiring lactating rooms in certain public spaces throughout the city

1 p.m., the Committee on Recovery and Resiliency will hold an oversight meeting to review Build It Back’s Temporary Relocation Assistance Program

At 1 p.m. Wednesday, an “all-in-one” resource clinic providing access to free, comprehensive services addressing aging, disability, immigration, personal finance, and transportation issues will launch at Brooklyn Borough Hall. The effort will be held on Wednesdays in the months ahead, and is intended to enhance the work done by Borough President Eric Adams’ Constituent Assistance Center to provide assistance on issues facing the borough’s residents.

ThursdayBoth houses of the New York State Legislature are in session on Thursday in Albany. A budget is due by midnight!

At 10 a.m. Thursday, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, the first African-American woman to hold this position in the history of New York State, will speak at the South Bronx Leadership Forum, in recognition of Women’s History Month. Clark will discuss progress in reforming the criminal justice system and her experience at the helm of the Bronx District Attorney’s Office.

10:30 a.m., the Committee on Housing and Buildings will meet on two bills: one to exempt the taxation of alterations and improvements to multiple dwellings and another to exempt the and abate the taxation of certain rehabilitated buildings as authorized by the real property tax law

1 p.m., the Committee on Governmental Operations will hold an oversight hearing to evaluate the structure and content of the Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report (PMMR)

At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, City & State NY will host the “Above & Beyond: Honoring Women of Public and Civic Mind” gala. The event will celebrate 25 accomplished women working in various fields, including business, public service, nonprofit, organized labor and media, and feature special guest speaker Maya Wiley, Counsel to Mayor de Blasio.

Friday and the weekendNothing on our radar for the end of the week as of now. Stay tuned for updates here and other days this week!

***Have events or topics for us to include in an upcoming Week Ahead in New York Politics? E-mail Gotham Gazette executive editor Ben Max any time: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (please use "For Week Ahead" as email subject).

Gov. Cuomo at a 2014 charter school rally (via The Governor's Office on flickr)

Five New York City parents are calling on Governor Andrew Cuomo to withdraw funding and increase oversight of charter schools as a response to what they say is systemic mistreatment of children, particularly their own, by the Success Academy charter school network.

In an open letter to the governor, four parents of former Success Academy students, and one whose child is still enrolled in the network, criticize Success Academy’s disciplinary policies and say its practices are “discriminatory against students with special needs.”

The letter is being hand-delivered Friday morning to the governor’s office in Albany, it was shared with Gotham Gazette in advance. It is the latest in an ongoing, intense public debate over the practices of the controversial charter network, which has seen a series of troubling incidents come to light amid longtime concerns over its strict approach to discipline, suspension rates, and focus on test preparations.

Success Academy was founded by former City Council Member Eva Moskowitz in 2006. It is the largest charter school network in the city, with approximately 11,000 students in 34 schools across the city, in each borough except Staten Island. It also has seven new schools opening in August. Success students, or scholars as they are known in the network’s parlance, perform remarkably well on standardized tests, leading to many accolades and repeated questions about Moskowitz’s “secret sauce.”

But, the network has also faced much criticism for its harsh discipline policies and heavy emphasis on testing. Last year, the New York Times reported that a Success Principal had created a ‘Got to Go’ list to push out underperforming students. Then, last month, the Times released a video that showed a Success teacher scolding and publicly humiliating a first-grade student in front of the rest of her class. The network is also the focus of at least two federal lawsuits that were filed recently.

In face of this criticism, Moskowitz has time and again cited the network’s high performance on standardized tests compared to traditional district schools. While apologizing she has said reported incidents are isolated and not indicative of network-wide problems. She has worn the lawsuits as a badge of honor and said she is tired of apologizing.

The parents who wrote the letter disagree about whether there are systemic problems at Success Academy. “Despite what CEO Eva Moskowitz says, the targeting and pushing out of students, specifically our own, is not an anomaly within this organization,” their letter states.

The parents cite instances where their children were routinely suspended, singled out, and shamed or excluded from field trips. They say Success often called them midday to pick up their children without reporting these events as suspensions. And, they claim Success Academy retaliated by calling the Administration for Children’s Services on them when they spoke out against these practices.

“Because of this ongoing mistreatment of our children, several of us have lost our jobs or had to drop out of school,” they write in the letter. The missive and its demands to Gov. Cuomo come amid budget negotiations when funding for charter schools is being debated. Recent state budgets have been good to the charter school sector, which Cuomo has been allied with for years. Cuomo has appeared to distance himself a bit from charters, but is still seen as an ally.

On Wednesday, Politico New York reported that a memo was circulated by the Success Academy legal team to all network staffers which seemed to show how the network is dealing with parents and the recent storm of negative attention. The memo lists mistakes which staff members should avoid, including one, “Letting parents get away with threats to go to the press/police/elected official.”

"If a parent makes this threat, contact advisory. Advisory can help diffuse this situation," the memo says. "But we cannot let parents 'get away' with these threats. Feel confident in pushing back on these and telling parents that threats are not a productive way to resolve conflict or build the relationship."

The parents who have written to the governor appear to have given up on the relationship. They are calling on the governor to hold Success Academy, and by extension all charter schools, accountable by supporting a state Assembly proposal to create a code of conduct for charters and to have schools provide annual discipline reports.

The letter also insists that the state should not increase funding for charters, either through the governor’s own initiatives or those proposed by the state Senate in its one-house budget. In his January State of the State address, Cuomo called for increasing per-pupil state aid to charters, which amounts to roughly $27 million. He also proposed a $63 million increase in supplemental tuition aid at charter schools. Charters have been calling for increased funding for years, including to up the per-pupil levels to match traditional public schools.

A Success Academy spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

At a recent event at New York Law School, Moskowitz defended her network. Addressing the issue of discipline, she said, “The truth of the matter is safety is the number one reason parents want out of the district schools, and we believe that our first obligation is for the safety of the children. There’s no learning that can occur if we aren’t able to guarantee that. So we have a no-nonsense, nurturing approach to discipline.”

The parents who’ve written to the governor say otherwise. “At a time like this, we need to invest in schools that hold our children up and value all of their potential and not schools that see children and families as disposable,” the letter states. “Eva Moskowitz has been criminalizing our children and ostracizing our families and we need the state to investigate and hold them accountable. No rewards for schools that do not play by the rules.”

Julie Laurence, Chief Program Officer at Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) with one of their members at their drop-in center. (Photo by City Limits/Adi Talwar)

Turning 21 is a milestone with a different meaning for a homeless youth in New York. When that day arrives, he or she usually must leave the city's youth shelter system, and they also lose many essential services. If they haven't found permanent housing on their own, they are forced back out onto the street. They can go into the large adult shelter system, but most youth don't feel safe mixed into the general adult population. Yet the city's supportive housing and the new LINC housing program are accessible only through shelters, meaning young people can miss out.

"The youth population is not provided with anywhere near enough resources to prevent them from becoming chronically homeless adults," says Craig Hughes, Assistant Director of Resource Counseling at Safe Horizon's Streetwork Project. "Without access to housing subsidies provided by the City, as well as resources such as public housing and consistent access to supportive housing, far too many homeless young people are at significant risk for violence, abuse and exploitation."

Tom Robbins and Annette Fuentes, City Limits' editing team in the early 1980s, in the magazine's offices. (photo courtesy of City Limits/Brian Patrick O'Donohue)

Since its start 40 years ago this month, City Limits has published millions of words about hundreds of topics and survived thanks to the smarts and sacrifice of dozens of journalists. The history below, combining an essay my predecessor Alyssa Katz wrote on the occasion of our 30th anniversary with my own update on the past 10 years, doesn't pretend to capture all the people and projects that made City Limits what it is. Hopefully, however, it does give a sense of where City Limits came from, the changes it has seen and the values that continue to drive our journalism four decades in. –Jarrett Murphy.

1976-1979: A Mission Begins

The Saving of 414 West 48th Street

What is Redlining? (Answer: Redlining is a white collar crime.)

South Bronx Snubbed on Redevelopment Plan

The headlines were forceful, printed in capital letters. They came from a publication that spoke to its times.

In 1976, New York City's neighborhoods were facing crushing challenges unlike any they had seen before. The city's fiscal crisis had left New York with few resources and a growing sense of doom. In many neighborhoods, arson and abandonment of apartment buildings were becoming everyday occurrences, as some property owners determined that their real estate was worth more in insurance proceeds than it was for its rental income. By the summer of 1977, more than 20,000 buildings in New York would be abandoned. At the end of that year the city owned 6,000 buildings and was poised to foreclose on 25,000 more.

"There's a lot of states ahead," Mayor Bill de Blasio said on MSNBC late Monday night from Iowa, where he spent the weekend campaigning for Hillary Clinton in her bid to become the Democratic nominee and next President of the United States.

And de Blasio is right - there are 49 more states and the District of Columbia to vote before the primary season is over. New York will be the 37th state to hold a vote when April 19 comes around.

As de Blasio spoke, it was still unclear if Clinton or Bernie Sanders had prevailed in the first vote of the primary - Iowa caucus goers split down the middle between the two - with Martin O'Malley garnering a few votes and deciding to suspend his campaign.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz won, with Donald Trump coming in second and Marco Rubio third.

It is unclear whether there will still be a race on either side of the aisle when voting comes to New York. The Republican field has a lot of winnowing to do and the two remaining Democrats could be in for a long slog - but, April 19 is a long way away.

Next up, New Hampshire. Primary voting there will take place on Tuesday, Feb. 9. Before the New Hampshire primary, though, each party will hold another debate - the Democrats on Thursday, Feb. 4 and the Republicans on Saturday, Feb. 6. The details of the Democratic debate are still being negotiated as it was a late addition to the schedule - the Democrats have been criticized for a limited number of debates and for holding several on weekend nights.

The Clinton and Sanders campaigns have reportedly agreed to add four additional debates to the two that still remain on the original schedule (those are still set for Feb. 11 and March 9). Other than this week's in New Hampshire, the other three have not been given dates.

On the Republican side, there are debates set for Feb. 6, 13, and 26; as well as for March 10. There could always be others added, of course.

As for the votes to take place leading up to New York, 34 states will have held either caucus or primary votes for both major parties, while two states - North Dakota and Kentucky - will have only held their Republican vote, with their Democratic vote coming later in the spring. The calendar is below.

Keep in mind that there are actually four election days in New York this year: presidential primary on April 19, followed by congressional primaries in June, state-level primaries in September, and the November Election Day.

The presidential primary calendar (if no party is noted, both major party votes will occur the same day):

History is always a summary. It weaves together disparate threads of individual experiences, and some threads color the pattern more than others. The conventional narrative of New York City after the 1970s fiscal crisis emphasizes what mayors, police commissioners, developers and other powerful people did.

But that's not the story. It's just one.

Since its founding 40 years ago this month, City Limits has told a different tale—one that has sometimes complemented, and other times contradicted the official version. That's because we talked about the New York seen by people like tenants, single mothers, strikers, prisoners, advocates, social workers, the homeless, the young and others who, when they strolled the traditional corridors of power, did so with a visitor's pass.

As the excerpted stories below indicate, those New Yorkers had their own kind of power, and the city has been shaped by it. The stories are just snippets from our work over the past four decades. They reflect the history that City Limits saw and the New York it was founded to cover.

For a look at those stories as City Limits hits its 40th anniversary, click here.

Crisis is part of the gig for the chief health official in the nation's largest city, and Dr. Mary Bassett has dealt with her share of emergencies in the two years she's served as commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. First there was Ebola, followed by Legionnaires', and now comes Zika—and those are just the ones the public has heard about. New York City is also seeing an outbreak of whooping cough, Bassett told a Thursday briefing at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

But as Bassett sees it, her job is as much about confronting the "enduring disparities" that characterize public health in New York City as it is about responding to sudden threats. The map of disease and death in the city reflects "patterns of marginalization," she told members of the Center for Community and Ethnic Media, "patterns that I am determined to talk about and ameliorate."

Among the more striking examples: Life expectancy in Brownsville is 11 years shorter, on average, than for residents of the financial district. "That means Brownsville has a life expectancy more along the lines of Sri Lanka, a developing country," Bassett told the panel moderated by NY1 anchor Errol Louis, the director of urban reporting at the school and joined by Vania Andre, editor-in-chief of the Haitian Times, and I.

When Mayor de Blasio arrived in Albany on Tuesday, he had a lot to talk about: aid to CUNY, cost-sharing for Medicaid, mayoral control of the schools and more. Instead, upstate lawmakers wanted to talk about a property tax cap. New York City is the only place in the state that doesn't have one, and apparently that irks Republicans.

The property tax is one of the few revenue lines that the city controls on its own. If it wants to raise other taxes, like the income tax, it has to go to Albany for approval. That fact is probably not unrelated to the push to get the mayor to surrender his authority to raise the property levy.

The property tax accounts for about 40 percent of the city's revenue each year, twice as much as the personal income tax (about 20 percent) or sales tax (roughly 14 percent). Mayor Bloomberg oversaw a significant increase to close the post September 11 budget gap, a move that hurt his first-term popularity a lot. As the chart above indicates, growth in the tax rate has been modest; it actually dropped last year on "class 1" properties. Since property tax revenue grows with property values, those numbers (in the chart below) rise a little more, especially for some classes of properties.

***The following is an investigative series by our partner City Limits News, with CUNY Graduate School of Journalism***

In 2009, New York State officials said the Green Jobs/Green New York program would retrofit a million houses and create 14,000 jobs. The results fell well short. Are there lessons to be learned for Gov. Cuomo's new wave of energy innovation?

When the Green Jobs/Green New York bill was signed in 2009, there was talk of delivering both energy efficiency and economic justice. But prospects for real progress were narrowed by negotiations over the law.

New York charted a new path to energy efficiency, using "on-bill financing" so low-income homeowners could get retrofits they couldn't afford up front. But utility companies, lenders and ratings companies all made demands and decisions that made the approach a poor fit for households of limited means.

Some hoped the Green Jobs/Green New York program would produce as many as 14,000, but it appears to have generated but a few hundred. People who worked with the initiative said abundant paperwork and an under-developed market were part of the problem.

A few years ago, from New York's City Hall to the state house to the Obama administration, everyone was excited about the prospect of creating thousands of green jobs. The result differs from the rhetoric.

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